Good and Evil
—a true story
The professor was so proud
Of his knowledge and his theories.
He loved to prod his students
With his question and his queries.
“If God is only good.
Then how can evil exist?
God must then be evil,
And that’s why evil persists.
“If God created evil
As He did like everything,
The idea that God is good
Is a myth to which we cling.”
The students all were silent
As they tried to understand.
At last, one student there
Did boldly raise his hand.
“Then tell me, good professor,
What is hot and what is cold?
I do not buy your theory
In the way that it was told.”
“For can we say that cold
Exists and is a thing?”
The professor quickly asked,
“Does not the coldness sting?”
The students giggled out;
They loved the professor’s joke.
But silence filled the classroom
As the student further spoke.
“Sir, you’ve taught us physics:
That cold does not exist.
We consider it the absence
Of heat, as you insist.
“We’re taught at absolute zero
There is all loss of heat.
All matter is inert.
The absence is complete.
“Evil is like cold
And it can’t stand alone.
It only is the absence
Of light from God’s great throne.
“God didn’t create evil,
It’s neither faith nor love.
It’s like the dark and cold
That I was speaking of.
“Evil comes when love
Leaves the human heart.
Like the cold and darkness.
It’s when from God we part.”
This student one day saw
Through time and space’s confines
And gave the greatest awe
To God. The student? Einstein.
LTC Roy E. Peterson, US Army Military Intelligence and Russian Foreign Area Officer (Retired) has published more than 7,300 poems in 102 of his 125 books. He has been an Army Attaché in Moscow, Commander of INF Portal Monitoring in Votkinsk, first US Foreign Commercial Officer in Vladivostok, Russia and Regional Manager in the Russian Far East for IBM. He holds a BA, Hardin-Simmons University (Political Science); MA, University of Arizona (Political Science); MA, University of Southern California (Int. Relations) and MBA University of Phoenix. He taught at the University of Arizona, Western New Mexico University, University of Maryland, Travel University and the University of Phoenix.
You’ve got some good word-play here, Roy, with sense behind it. I like the idea of evil and darkness (and presumably other things) being essentially absences but absences that do have significant effects. Einstein said this? Regardless, it’s a fresh (at least to me) idea on how we may approach some philosophical or moral questions. Whether it actually diminishes the problem of evil, I leave for others to dispute, but putting the idea in verse is just the sort of task at which you excel. Thanks for making me think.